


Flames

by genarti



Category: Tortall - Pierce
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-21
Updated: 2004-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 19:37:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/genarti/pseuds/genarti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mid-Lioness Rampant: Thom doesn't love anyone.  (Except.)</p><p>Written in December 2004, for Ji.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flames

Thom doesn't love anyone.

Except his sister. Lady knight, sword-wielding healer, court noble and lover of the King of Thieves; Alanna is the exception to many things. To Thom, she has always been the only exception that matters. He might use her, now and then, because in Thom's world that is what people do, but he would never try to hurt her.

He certainly doesn't love Roger. Which is just as well, really, because Roger doesn't love him either, but there are no illusions between them on that score. He isn't quite certain what Roger sees in him, though he would never say that aloud. Some of it he knows, and some of it he can guess; some of it he will never admit to himself, ever, because Thom manipulates other people and makes use of them and he is not the one manipulated and used, ever. That's not the way it works.

He knows what he sees in Roger, though. It isn't that Roger is handsome, though certainly he is. It isn't that he's charismatic, either, though he's that too; who else could build up a following in the same court that saw him executed for high treason in the most dramatic duel in decades? (Killed by Alanna, who is again the exception because Thom scorns everyone else who hates Roger. But, then, Thom scorns almost everyone else, period.) It isn't that he's good in bed; he is, though admittedly Thom doesn't have a lot to compare it to. Roger in bed is like Roger anywhere else, gentle and caressing with sharp edges hidden deep and slipping out, slicing just when Thom is off-guard, and Thom returns the favor. It isn't even that Roger is powerful. Thom has never wanted power, not exactly of the sort Roger wants, because power means having to deal with other people and be responsible for them and there are far, far better things to do with a life. Thom wants renown and respect and knowledge, not a throne and a lot of personnel management.

What Roger does have is knowledge, which he hands out in tiny smirking tidbits, and power of the right sort, which ties Thom to him and him to Thom. It's a strange attraction, this compound of dislike and respect and half-acknowledged kinship and constant mutual manipulation, but strong for all of that. Roger is the candle, Thom thinks with a slight hysterical edge, and he is the moth who is drawn against all sense to come closer, closer, until it is burning -- and oh the irony, because he is burning now, fever without sickness, his purple magic gone the color of dried blood, his Gift (his only love, and that is the rule which orders his life and the real rule to which Alanna is the exception) crackling hot inside his skin. He grips the edge of his desk with fingers that creak and ache like an old man's, and pulls himself together.

Because here is the truth of it: Thom does not love Roger, and Thom is dying because of Roger, and Thom's Gift is betraying him because of Roger, and the silent heart-deep truth is that none of that matters quite enough to change anything because Thom is caught in Roger's orbit, and all he can tell himself to make it all right is that Roger is caught in Thom's, too. It might even be true.


End file.
